The term, Nepantla
is a Nahuatl (Aztec language) term connoting in between or a reference
to the space of the middle. A number of contemporary scholars, writers,
poets and artists have elaborated upon this concept, enhancing and/or adding on
to the Nahua concept. (See Gloria Anzaldua, Pat Mora, Yreina Cervantez, Miguel
Leon Portilla).

Most often the
term is referencing endangered peoples, cultures, and/or gender, who due to invasion/conquest/marginalization
or forced acculturation, engage in resistance strategies of survival. In this
sense, this larger, cultural space of Nepantla becomes a postmodern paradigm
or consciousness rooted in the creation of a new middle. Anzaldua calls
this La Nueva Mestizaje, the intent of which is to heal from the open wound
of colonial occupation. Sometimes, it is a reference to living in the borderlands
or crossroads, and the process of creating alternative spaces in which
to live, function or create. In other words, it is the process of developing political,
cultural or psychological consciousness as a means of survival. For populations
impacted by the historical trauma of colonialism and what some have termed spiritual
conquest, one strategy of cultural survival, or decolonization is the process
of transculturation, which in many ways is resisting the mainstream, while,
reinterpreting and redefining cultural difference as a place of power.

How do Chicanas/os
decolonize their minds? By entering the Coatlicue State, according to Gloria
Anzaldua in Borderlands: La Frontera/The New Mestiza.

"Coatlicue
is one of the powerful images, or 'archtypes,' that inhabits, or passes through
my psyche. For me, la Coatlicue is the consuming internal whirlwind, the
symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche. Coatlicue is the mountain,
the Earth Mother who conceived all celestial beings out of her cavernous womb.
Goddess of birth and death, Coatlicue gives and takes away life; she is
the incarnation of cosmic processes."(Borderlands,
p. 46)